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2/24/11
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Language Shift, Language Death���Language Revival, Language Revitalization Four Examples
Cathy O’Connor & Katie Franich LX 340 Language Myths
Revival; Revitalization…���Bringing something back to life, or bringing back its vitality
An incredibly complex undertaking…
To understand why it’s complex,
we have to ask certain things about a particular case of language revitalization:
To understand the challenge of language revitalization:
•What are you trying to revitalize?
•How far gone is the variety you are trying to revitalize? What do you have to work with?
•What does it mean to revitalize it? What are you trying to accomplish?
• Who are you? Who’s in this effort with you?
• Why are you trying to do this?
>>But first, an antecedent question: ��� why did the language stop being used? ��� How did it become moribund?
A first case: Northern Pomo
An indigenous language of Northern California, spoken for thousands of years in the valleys around the Russian River….
Potter Valley, CA Potter Valley, CA
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Mrs. Edna Campbell Guerrero 1907-1995 When Edna was a child, around 1915, everyone in her family and community spoke Northern Pomo.
In 1995, when she died at age 89, none of her grandchildren spoke the language.
Her children’s generation understood, but didn’t speak fluently, and didn’t know many words and constructions.
Her grandchildren knew a few words…
What happened?
Russians
Spanish
Masan (White people)
So why would this influx of White People make the Pomo people stop speaking their language?
Edna’s grandmother (saw the Spaniards arrive)
Edna’s mother (forced march to Covelo)
Edna (segregated schools; Indian schools)
Edna’s daughter (de facto segregation)
Edna’s granddaughter (1960s--still signs “No Indians”)
Edna’s great-granddaughter
To understand the challenge of language revitalization:
•How far gone is it? What do you have to work with?
Fluent speakers? A few elderly speakers Written texts? No. No writing system.
•What could it mean to revitalize it? Knowledge of the lexicon and basic grammar? The subtleties of the language? Knowledge of culturally important words? Basic fluency? For who? How many?
To understand the challenge of language revitalization:
•Whatever level of revitalization you aim for, how will you teach it?
Most language teaching presumes a written form of the language, just for convenience. How do you teach a spoken language to adults with no written materials?
Step 1: How do you construct an orthography that will capture the important phonological distinctions of the language?
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This layout compares sounds/le4ers in isola5on and in words
Mrs. Edna Campbell Guerrero
dog hayu the dog hayu nam
basket phik'a
To understand the challenge of language revitalization:
•What are you trying to revitalize?
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Mrs. Elenor Stevenson Gonzales 1905 - 2004 Not from Potter Valley… “That’s not my dialect”
To understand the challenge of language revitalization:
•What are you trying to revitalize?
•How far gone is it? What do you have to work with?
•What does it mean to revitalize it? What are you trying to accomplish?
• Who are you? Who’s in this effort with you?
• Why are you trying to do this?
At the Senior Citizens’ Barbeque “Why are you trying to steal our old people’s stories?
To understand the challenge of language revitalization
(Pomo person about my age to me) “Why are you trying to steal our old people’s stories?”
(“Old Lady” to Edna)
“Why are you selling our language?
It should die with us.”
(Young person to Edna)
“Why didn’t you all teach us the language?”
To understand the challenge of language revitalization
Language ideology:
"self-evident ideas and objectives a group holds concerning roles of language in the social experiences of members as they contribute to the expression of the group" (Heath:53) and "the cultural system of ideas about social and linguistic relationships, together with their loading of moral and political interests”(Irvine:255) ���
Woolard & Schieffelin (1994)
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To understand the challenge of language revitalization
Linguist: “We must revitalize this language. The people should know their language.”
Person: “The children should become totally proficient in the socially dominant language as their key to higher education and a better life.”
Person: “The language is part of our cultural heritage and our children should learn it, even though we didn’t.”
A second case: Classical Hebrew
A spoken language for a thousand years until the 2nd or 3rd century CE….
Modern Hebrew: ���A Study in Language Revival (ca. 1890-1914)
• Classical Hebrew gradually ceased to be a spoken language some time after the 2nd or 3rd Century CE
• But Hebrew remained a high prestige liturgical language learned by Jewish males for daily religious services
• It was used as the medium of the secular “Haskala [enlightenment] literature” in the late 18th to mid-19th century
To understand the challenge of language revitalization
•What are you trying to revitalize?
•How far gone is the variety you are trying to revitalize? What do you have to work with?
•What does it mean to revitalize it? What are you trying to accomplish?
• Who are you? Who’s in this effort with you?
• Why are you trying to do this?
The Zionist Movement: ���Return to Palestine • In the late 19th century, Jews from many different
language backgrounds (i.e., Slavic, Germanic, etc.) came to settle in Palestine (the “Babel Generation”)
• They needed a common language for communication and for cultural cohesion
• They had Yiddish, but attitudes towards Yiddish were largely negative, while attitudes towards Hebrew were highly positive
‘Corpus Planning’ in Hebrew • Vernacularization of Hebrew was initiated by
Eliezer Ben-Yehuda who immigrated to Palestine in 1881
• Although the vocabulary and written form of Modern Hebrew remained Semitic, European syntax was often adopted
• In order to modernize the language, borrowing from European languages, Palestinian Arabic, and more recently American English occurred.
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Micro language Planning: Revival as a Grassroots Effort (Nahir, 1998)
• Settlement schoolteachers developed total immersion programs for pre-school children
• Gradually through reinforcement and social reward, Hebrew became a peer language and child-to-adult transmission began to occur
• Within one or two decades, this generation began raising their children with Hebrew as a first language
A “Success Story”… • In 1922, Hebrew became an official language in
British-ruled Palestine along with English and Arabic
• In 1948, Hebrew became the official language of the newly declared state of Israel --along with Arabic
• Hebrew is the only language known to be fully and successfully revived. It has been called “unique, unprecedented, and even ‘miraculous.’” (Nahir, 1998)
To understand the challenge of language revitalization
•How far gone is the language? What do you have to work with?
•What does it mean to revitalize it? What are you trying to accomplish?
• Why are you trying to do this?
• Who are you? Who’s in this effort with you?
A third case: K’ichee’ Maya
One of 30 Mayan languages spoken in Central America for over 1000 years
• Mayan language family comprised of around 30 languages spoken in Guatemala, Mexico, Belize and Honduras • Some languages are quite robust while
others are highly endangered – K’ichee’, Yucatec ~ 1,000,000 speakers – Itzaj ~ 30 fluent speakers
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Language Ideologies: The Case of Mayan Languages
• Many children are not learning the languages, even in more robust language communities
• Seen to be a hindrance to the modernization of Guatemalan society
• Mayan worldview and spiritual practices were equated with a type of witchcraft
The Maya ‘Movement’
• A movement in Guatemala started around the mid-1980s to promote Mayan culture and language
• Several organizations formed to study and and publish resources in Mayan languages
• Promotion of bilingual education and creation of private ‘Maya schools’
Ajb’atz’ Enlace Quiché
• NGO partnering with the Ministry of Education to bring technology to rural Guatemala, facilitate training of bilingual teachers, and create teaching materials in Mayan languages
Mayan Language Ideology
• Many Mayas believe that speaking the language is a defining characteristic of ‘being Maya’ –Strong culture-language connection helps in language preservation during times of oppression
–Defining the Maya movement in terms of ‘culture’ made it less threatening to government officials
Mayan Language Ideology (cont.)
• A strong cultural connection to language also creates very deep pride for individuality in language identity – Pride in dialect differences
• This can be difficult when trying to ‘standardize’ a variety of a language – Promoting cross-dialectal ‘synonyms’
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Mayan Language Ideology (cont.)
• Even more difficult when creating an orthography
– How to decide on a form if two different dialects are equally valid?
– Choosing the more ‘conservative’ form –More complete form –Older form –Form most easily interpreted by the majority of speakers
Mayan Language Ideology (cont.)
• Ex. Use of long vowels in K’ichee’
(1) you plant the cornfield the cornfield is planted
Dialect 1 kaaEk ri ab’iix kaEk ri ab’iix Dialect 2 kaEk ri ab’iix katiik ri ab’iix
(adapted from England (2003) , p. 736)
A fourth case: Medumba
One of Cameroon’s 230 mother tongues…
• There are currently around 210,000 speakers of Medumba, a Grassfields Bantoid language
• Many young people are not learning to speak the
language as French becomes more widely spoken NaEonal RecogniEon of Indigenous
Languages of Cameroon
• Rewrite of ConsEtuEon in 1996 to reflect an ‘endeavor to promote and protect naEonal languages’
• Parliamentary bill for teaching of naEonal languages in schools in 1998 (Anchimbe, 2006)
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NaEonal RecogniEon of Indigenous Languages of Cameroon
• Previous to this, children were not allowed to speak their languages in school, and would be punished if they a[empted to do so
• Comité de Langue pour l'Etude et la ProducEon des oeuvres Bamiléké Medumba (CEPOM)
• l'AssociaEon NaEonale des Commissions de Langues Camerounaises
Challenges at the Local Level for Medumba
• Again, mulEple dialects to consider in developing a ‘standard’ form of Medumba
General Challenges to Language Promotion in Cameroon
• Lack of resources allocated for language development
• Many more languages in competition for these resources
• Very little external support for teaching of languages in school; efforts are still at the level of ‘grassroots’
General Challenges to Language Promotion in Cameroon
• Communication and networking is difficult at this stage due to limits on internet availability
• Language development is not a high priority among aid organizations, particularly given the enormous amount of linguistic diversity in Cameroon and in Africa in general
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Sources
Anchimbe, E. (2006). FuncEonal seclusion and the future of indigenous languages in Africa: The case of Cameroon. Selected Proceedings of the 35th Annual Conference on African LinguisEcs, ed. John Mugane et al., 94-‐103. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.
England, N. (2003). Mayan language revival and revitalizaEon poliEcs: Linguists and linguisEc ideologies. American Anthropologist, 105(4):733-‐743.
A first case: Northern Pomo
Questions?